Please correct me if I'm wrong - I think phrasing the request appropriately is a big part of this, and could mitigate a lot of potential misunderstanding. Something like:

"Would you be interested getting coffee sometime?"

Definitely sounds like a date setup to me, so framing it as (1) more immediate than a planned date, and (2) work related would be much better. Something more like:

"I'm going to grab some coffee in a minute, wanna join?” or "I'd like to discuss some work stuff with you, do you have time later today to chat over coffee?"

Again, these are just my initial thoughts so I'd be interested to hear if it doesn't actually make much of a difference.

It's honestly hard to tell sometimes. People are emotionally complex, and life is messy. But there is a reason office romances typically have HR rules in a lot of companies.

What? There are workplace rules for romances? Is that legal? I have never heard about that. Are they in the contract? Or the house rules? What are they covering?

Yea, my HR department has it in our contract. My last place had it so no couples were allowed in the same department.

Interesting.

- What happens if people become couples that are in the same department?

- Is one of them send to a differrent department?

- Is one of them fired?

- Is it ignored until it becomes a problem?

- Do they have to announce it? If so at which point? The first date? The first kiss? When they have sex?

- What if they keep it a secret?

So many questions!

I am certain this would be illegal or void in Germany.

Sorry don't have any answers, but I will say I met my husband at my last job, but I moved on to a new job to avoid the hr issues as he was the Team Lead.

It's actually why I find some of the advice from the other female engineers so troubling. Our relationship attraction first started when he took me for coffee break, to see how I was doing after my 6 month probationary period ended.

So, let's play "roles reversed" game. Or maybe not. It is sad however, that you cannot even ask another human being for a cup of coffee.

"cup of coffee" is code for date. Plausible deniability and all. There are other ways to talk that are less ambiguous.

As a straight male I've asked plenty of people, both male and female to grab a cup of coffee. So far no one seems to have been confused. They all understood it was just getting coffee and chatting.

Ok, then what's the code for cup of coffee?

The same. The only reason plausible deniability works is that it's ambiguous.

Ambiguous might not be quite the right term. In many cases for such an invite, it's desirable that it be pretty clear you mean a date, but you still retain deniability.

I guess you could say you want the implication to be clear and fairly unambiguous, but not explicit/provable.

Double entendre comes to mind.

"Hey, I'm heading out for coffee in 15, want to join?"

There is a big difference between "lets meet and talk to each other for an hour at the coffee shop on the weekend" and "We are at work, lets take a quick break!"

"Cup of coffee" -- it just depends on the context and how it is asked.

"Want to grab some (Starbucks|Blue Bottle|Peetz|etc)?" Maybe they'll just get a cookie.

it's also sad that you can't just call someone to netflix and chill....right?

No. I prefer to watch movies snd shows alone, so attention needs not to be divided.

"Netflix and chill" is current code for having sex. The idea is that you go over to someone's house turn on Netflix and proceed to ignore it while you have sex. @hnbroseph was playing off of the fact that this is another phrase that when taken literally is innocent, but has implied meaning in a certain cultural context.

Though "Netflix and chill" is probably less ambiguous in most cases since it wasn't a commonly used phrase before it gained its implied meaning.

I thought this was code for having so much bandwidth you can waste it

No, because it's a universal tongue-in-cheek way to state you want to have sex. "Cup of coffee" to "I want to fuck" however, is a stretch.

Once again, inviting someone over to your place for coffee after a night out isn't the same thing as inviting a coworker for a cup of coffee in the middle of the day.

This is a great point it also underlines that a person might do something awkward not because they have bad intentions, but because they have read some less then stellar advice on HN.

> to take what they are saying with a grain of salt.

funnily, that would beat the purpose entirely.

Yea I was thinking about that. I think if their advice was screened by HR, it might be a lot more valuable for guys.